Virginia Public Radio

President Obama is chiding Congress for not acting on his slimmed down plan to spur economic growth in Virginia and elsewhere.

Election year politicking is expected to derail this latest effort to get the economy moving.

The president has laid out a “to do” list for Congress. He’s asking for lawmakers to help him lower interest rates on mortgages for millions of homeowners who are struggling with their payments in the midst of this sluggish economy. And he wants to entice U-S companies with holdings overseas to invest that money here at home. Virginia Republican Scott Rigell says he isn’t too impressed with the president’s “to do” list.

“The sum of everything that the president has proposed is minimal and really de minimis.”

But Virginia Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly says the president has every right to highlight inaction by the Republican controlled House.

“I think the president is right to chastise the Congress for not doing its job and for calling us to recalibrate and focus on job creating initiatives instead of wedge issues that divide us just because it’s a political year.”

The president is also asking Congress to renew tax breaks for clean energy firms. Environmentalists say thousands of jobs are at stake in Virginia and across the U-S if Congress allows them to expire. And Connolly says many businesses in his northern Virginia district are worried those tax credits will sunset at the end of this year.

“Well we certainly have a lot of firms that, if they’re not directly involved in renewable energy, they’re involved in the technology that undergirds it. So a lot of our firms have a direct interest in the whole issue of the renewal of the energy tax credit.”

But Republicans argue this is another example of the president giving a lofty speech without sending Congress specific details. Virginia Republican Congressman Morgan Griffith says he may be able to support extending the renewable energy tax credits, but as of yet he hasn’t seen anything concrete proposed.

“This is one of those I have to go through one by one. I don’t want us picking winners and losers. I do think we have to be careful.”

And Griffith says the mountainous ninth district he represents is already having a dubious relationship with some government tax credits. He points especially to the tax credits that are incentivizing the building of wind turbines on the top of mountains.

“In our area that just doesn’t make sense. You can’t get enough energy on a consistent basis and get it into the grid where it makes sense. And yet they’re going to put these things on the top of the mountains and we don’t know what the consequences are until we get them up and running to the environment and to the folks that live near them and what it does to property values, yet we’re just charging full steam ahead because there’s a tax incentive for them to put them up.”

There are some areas where the two parties may be able to work out compromises though. The president wants to give tax credits to small businesses who hire new employees and the House has already acted on a bill to ease the tax burden on small firms. The president also wants a new Veterans Jobs Corps. That could help Virginia’s veterans get training to go back into the work force when they return from duty. Congressman Rigell says helping veterans is a no brainer for him.

“I do believe that with respect to veterans it’s very appropriate to have incentives to hire our veterans. They have a disproportionately high unemployment rate, so I support efforts like that.”

The president has floated this “to do” list before as a part of his Jobs Act, but congressional Republicans never acted. Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran says there’s a reason House Republicans are refusing to hold votes on the president’s proposals.

“Even if it was something the House majority had planned to do the fact the president asked them to do it they wouldn’t do it. The principle objective of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is to defy and defeat the President of the United States.”

The partisan tit for tat is nothing new, and analysts expect the gridlock to persist through November s elections. That means the president and House Republicans are both likely to continue to see their agenda’s blunted. Voters will then be left to decipher which party is to blame for the sluggish economy.

-by Matt Laslo